Affairs bring pain with them. The pain hits you on many levels. There are physical pains,emotional pains, existential pains, relationship pains, and spiritual pains that come with affairs.
The strange thing about pain is that when you experience it, your body reacts. Your body doesn’t sort out whether it is imaginary or real, whether it makes sense or not. All your body knows is that it’s in pain.
When you are in pain, it changes your mental functioning. When you are in pain, your focus narrows.
You start becoming more internally focused. This is what keeps you from seeing other options for moving past the pain.
This is part of the effects of pain. Pain is another way that your body reminds you that something needs to be taken care of.
Sure you can excuse it for a while with kitschy phrases like “pain is weakness leaving your body.” Such phrases are wonderful for US Marine recruiting posters or advertisements for fitness centers, but they will do little for you in terms of dealing with your hurt and pain.
They may buy some time and make you think that you are stronger.
At the other extreme, pain does not mean that you are helpless. It does not mean that your life has to stop everything. You are not superman, nor are you the 90-pound weakling either.
Pain does mean that you need to slow down and discover what your body is telling you. Pain is communicating something to you. You will need to decipher what it is telling you.
It may be telling you that you need to make some changes. Those changes could be emotional, physical or relational. You may have to change ‘how’ you are doing something. You may have to ‘let go’ of something as part of those changes.
Pain is not your enemy.
Pain is protecting your body, your heart, your mind and your spirit. When you see your protections as your enemy, it puts you in a self-destruct mode.
When recovering from an affair, you don’t need self-destruction. You need healing. Your pain is alerting you to what is blocking or preventing that healing.
So instead of dismissing it with kitschy dis-missives or viewing it as ‘the enemy’, sit down and find out what it’s telling you. Your pain has your best interest and protection as its function.
It’s telling you something with a level of honesty that your friends don’t have.
If the pain from the affair isn’t going away, you may be in Affair Trauma. The video, “Overcoming Affair Trauma” guides you in moving past this so that you can self-soothe once again.
It’s possible to get stuck in pain. You don’t have to stay there or numb it out, there are things you can do. Click on the link, complete the form and start making those changes.
Best Regards,
Jeff
